School of English, University of Nottingham.
Psychological Institute, University of Tübingen.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2021 Jun;75(2):107-113. doi: 10.1037/cep0000249. Epub 2021 May 13.
Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humor). Several factors may influence emotional responses to irony, such as the perspective from which the utterance is encountered (e.g., speaker vs. target) and the tone of voice (prosody) used. To examine these issues, we conducted two event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in which participants listened to scenarios describing emotional responses to either literal criticism or ironic criticism. Ironic criticism was delivered with either natural or ironic prosody. Scenarios either described an emotional response the speaker expected to elicit from the target (speaker perspective), or the target's actual emotional response (target perspective). Expected or actual emotional responses were described as either "amused" (Experiment 1) or "hurt" (Experiment 2). ERPs were calculated time-locked to the end of the ironic or literal statements, and to the audio presentation of the critical emotion words. Results showed a significant effect of perspective for amused conditions, reflected by a larger late posterior positivity for the target than speaker conditions, indicating amused responses are more expected from speaker than target perspective. This effect was not seen for hurt conditions, suggesting these are equally expected from target and speaker perspectives. The data also revealed a more negative-going ERP waveform specifically for ironic criticism delivered with ironic prosody, reflecting prosodic processing. This suggests prosody may be able to speed the identification of irony. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
反语通常比字面意思更难处理和解释，因此被认为具有几种字面交流无法实现的社会和情感功能（例如礼貌或引入幽默）。有几个因素可能会影响对反语的情绪反应，例如遇到话语的视角（例如，说话者与目标）和使用的语音语调（韵律）。为了研究这些问题，我们进行了两项事件相关的脑电位（ERP）研究，参与者在其中听取了描述对字面批评或反语批评的情绪反应的场景。反语批评采用自然或反语韵律。场景要么描述了说话者期望从目标（说话者视角）引发的情绪反应，要么描述了目标的实际情绪反应（目标视角）。期望或实际的情绪反应被描述为“感到好笑”（实验 1）或“感到受伤”（实验 2）。ERP 是根据反语或字面陈述的结尾以及关键情绪词的音频呈现进行时间锁定计算的。结果表明，对于感到好笑的情况，视角有显著影响，这反映出目标条件的后外侧正波（late posterior positivity）比说话者条件更大，表明从说话者的角度来看，感到好笑的反应更受期待。对于感到受伤的情况则没有看到这种影响，这表明从目标和说话者的角度来看，这些反应同样是可以预料的。数据还显示，对于用反语韵律传达的反语批评，会出现更负向的 ERP 波，这反映出韵律处理。这表明韵律可以加快识别反语的速度。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
